the dancing scholar

I am perplexed to be back in this stage of creating work for the stage. Apparently, all of my research and thoughts are supposed to be adequate, and at this point, I am supposed to be working on a performance alone.

My reading is now for pleasure to stimulate and remind my mind of the field I am working in. But i wish not to distract myself too much with other peoples ideas, as good as I am at readopting them and using them for my own purposes. Instead, I am now working under the guidance of various artists I've identified as relevant. Through emails and telephone conversations, my work is no longer in the silent quiet quarters of the library, where I fill my mind with infinite ideas and takes furious notes on fascinating details. I am now at the will of my own creation. Working creatively through my body to develop a story through my body's memory.

But, since I've come to this very heady liberal arts college, I find myself questioning my work mid way through, as if my body's knowledge cannot possibly be as valuable or significant as the work I would sit down and experience in that cubicle in the library. I find that my work in my body also, has asked me to take time away from the library. And I feel this insecurity that I am now just a physical being, without the mind I know I have. But I now ask myself, that time I spend in the library, do I ever ask myself why am not in the studio instead? I would in my first year. But now that I'm graduating and have gradually let my body's needs fall further and further into the background, I notice a shift in my values and an unfortunate insecurity in the value of the work I have been anticipating these long years here.